The presence of winter weather-related contamination on pavement is a contributing factor in many aircraft runway excursions occurring during touch down and take off. Tire to road friction is significantly diminished by ice contamination and measurements of friction are directly relevant to the braking action which will be available to an aircraft and as such there are regulations requiring that the friction of the runway surface be evaluated with approved friction testing equipment during winter weather events. Continuous Friction Measurement Equipment or CFME is not yet universally-approved for runway condition assessment in winter weather events. Reduction of the standard deviation of the measurements of coefficient of friction is key to ensuring that the displayed friction measurements are representative of braking action available at any geographic location and therefore a CFME-type tester with improved standard deviation of sensor output signal is advantageous.
One arrangement for continuous road friction measurement is provided in U.S. Pat. No. 6,928,857 issued Aug. 16 2006 of the present applicant which provides an arrangement to accurately measure road friction. The present arrangement provides an improvement to the construction shown in this patent.